


unkempt

by handsandknees



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Existential Crisis, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Mild Smut, Negative Thoughts, Sadness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-10-31 14:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10900932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handsandknees/pseuds/handsandknees
Summary: The deconstruction of his mind is neither pretty nor simple.





	1. hesitance v. hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> here is a little thing i wrote whilst i was sad at 11pm. please read the tags and take care of yourself. x

He’s learned to live with the disheartened feeling. The hesitance. 

Cautiousness, inevitability, futility, distress, insecurity; hindsight, _disappointment_ , **regret** , **_resentment_**.

They swim around in Dan’s head like a fucked up alphabet soup until the message trickles deep down into his brain; he drowns in it.


	2. caution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> handle with care

Dan’s inability to hold himself back was inherent. It stuck with him through grade school and snuck it’s way into his pocket to ride into his adult years like a leech. 

They like to say you grow out of these things, but parasites are the kind that like to grow with you.

Eager and bright eyed, thirteen years old. Dan had inserted himself head-first into a social circle that felt a tad too reminiscent of musical chairs; by fifteen years old the sting of having the chair pulled out from underneath him subsided and the apprehension towards even the smallest of things gradually set in.

Tiny touches would jab into his sides and kind words felt like sandpaper on a sunburn, everything accompanied by a raw kind of _sting_. The reflex to build walls up is entirely chemical; reflexive. 

Adrenaline, dopamine - a rush, a pulse.

And they’ll still say: “ _Mistakes are meant to be made._ ”

The sentence is a contradiction in itself, Dan is educated enough to know that much. The innate context of being wrong cannot coincide with accuracy. 

Perfection is ideal and control is necessary.

The way he hides his face at 4am, the dull blue glow of the Skype window open on his laptop screen, is to prevent from accidents. Mistakes. Because roaming blue eyes cannot scrutinize what they cannot see. 

He abandons all hope on his Law degree because you cannot fail at something that no longer matters. 

Dan wonders if maybe that’s why no one ever bothered with him in the first place. 

Wonders if he’s a mistake himself. 

Wonders if Phil is blind, or if the fluorescent **CAUTION** sign on his forehead isn’t large enough to read.

Dan wants to scream it at him, tell him to stop ignoring the signs and just be fucking _careful_ for once. 

The irony of it all acts as a sort of inevitable paradox that will blind and dizzy him in the future. He cares little for the past but ever so much for the future and every second that passes by loses it’s meaning. It’s easier that way. 

Except it’s not. 

It’s fucking _agonizing_. Blue eyes that whiz by in his subconscious and burn away the disgusting alphabet soup of thoughts letter by letter, slow and steady. 

Suddenly counting things seems appropriate. He can attach a number to things to keep them in order in his mind; the number of fingers that wrap around his own each day, the number of eyelashes that guard the moon beams that lull him to sleep each night. 10...600.

Careful perfection, reckless supervision. 

They somehow go hand in hand, but the leech hangs on by a thread.


	3. the inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and how to cope

Life has a funny way of fucking with you. You can make a million mistakes, avoid 10 million more, and still, the outcome is the same.

Dan thinks about this concept a lot. 

He thinks about the days when he would unironically say _”YOLO!”_ , or when his Sunday school teacher would tell him to live his life to the fullest. 

That was a concept he also thought about a lot; how an intangible, relative thing like life could possibly have a physical volume.

Everyone had laughed when he asked.

_“How do you know when you’re full?”_

_“Pardon me, Daniel?”_

_“When you’re full? Of life, ma’am.”_

_A smattering of giggles and a rustling of trainers on old hardwood._

_“God will tell you when, love,” she explained, clearly phased by the question._

_All Dan could do was nod and politely fold his hands over the tabletop._

 

Death’s unwavering presence keeps one sweaty palm clutched tight around his wrists when he knows he needs to reach out, and the other held fast around his throat when he knows he needs to scream. 

It’s another fucked up tendency that roots and wiggles deep down into his frontal lobe and keeps him from doing anything useful. 

And it’s the kind that stains through his skull and spills over everything he touches.

Sometimes Phil gets to see it. 

Sometimes he gets to see it on nights and early mornings when Dan shakes with thrum of his mind.

 

_“We all fucking die and we turn into dust, or fertilizer, or whatever, and then we wither away and then we’re gone,” he says to Phil one night over 3am coffee._

_Phil had given him a small smile, eyes watching the little swirls in his mug before giving a calculated answer._

_“Is Matt Bellamy still alive?,” he tries._

_“Of course.”_

_“And you adore him.”_

_“Well, yeah. He’s a musical genius,” Dan sighed, sipping the last bit of his drink._

_“So, one of your idols is still alive, making music, and changing lives just like he changed yours...and he’s going to die one day.”_

_They lock eyes for only a moment._

_“Yes, Phillip. Thank you for reminding me.”_

_He lets out a small laugh, scooting closer to him on the sofa to bump their knees together._

_“What I mean is, you will die someday, yes. But that doesn’t mean you have to treat everyday like someday.”_

You don’t have to treat everyday like someday.

And today is not someday, tomorrow will not be someday, on a Friday afternoon two weeks from now, it will still not be someday; he tells himself this every morning and every evening. 

Phil mumbles it in his ear on sleepless nights like an echo. 

Death is inevitable someday, but at 3am with Phil next to him and Muse playing softly on the TV, it is not someday.


	4. futile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reality

2009 was simultaneously the best and worst year of Dan’s life.

On one hand, he’d finally met Phil. He’d gotten to touch and feel and burn inside; his heart scalding hot with the constant warmth and light that love tends to bring.

On the other hand, he’d finally met Phil, and slowly after people had begun to notice.

Magnifying glass. Burning a hole through his brain with the much too bright light of unwarranted curiosity and demanding voices. 

Magnifying glass. Exploding every single thing he does into one of those cubic blueprints; each side makes up what he is. Each side makes up what _they_ are.

What they are is actually quite simple, but it is **pointless** to try and explain that to literally dozens, to hundreds, to thousands of people that never really asked for permission inside. 

They are: laying in Phil’s bed with Uma Thurman above them like an old friend (her face is much less pixely in person).

They are: bruise lipped, sleepy and sated at 7am after breakfast and a quickie before his parents wake up. 

Most importantly, they are: incredibly, entirely, _completely_ in-fucking-love

And although the overwhelming feeling pinpricks at the nerves up and down Dan’s spine, pushes at his carotid artery and wills his heart to beat harder - _1, 2, 3_ \- he still feels the pointlessness of it all squeeze by and cloud up the lovely, lovely, warmth with more disgusting alphabet soup.

Phil will try, again, to eat it all up. To swallow down the, _”It’s pointless.”_ , Dan whispers into parted lips in their new apartment. Phil can’t tell if the salt he tastes on his tongue is bubbling up from the back of his throat, regurgitating all of the force-fed words that his eyes take in, or if it’s spilling down his beautiful flushed cheeks like tiny rivers from those same eyes.

However, Phil does know is that it is nearly _impossible_ to try and convince Dan that those things, things that foreign eyes like to notice, don’t matter. 

He tells him so, during Easter dinner at his parent’s house in 2012.

_” **Dammit** , would you just listen to me,” Phil says, barely above a whisper where they sit on the front porch of his childhood home. It’s cold and Dan has pressed himself up against his side, heel to shoulder._

_“I- you know. I...just fucking **can’t** Phil,” he sniffles, tucking his nose into the fabric of his sweater sleeve. They don‘t do this often. Argue. The saddest thing about it all, is that it’s never really an argument. More like a one sided plea followed by words dripping in regret and frustration. _

_“Don’t look at it,” Phil mutters, tugging Dan’s phone out of his hand before promptly powering it off._

_Dan makes an unhappy noise, sinking against Phil’s side and going quiet._

_“Forget about them for tonight, yeah? It’s just us. I know I can’t make you forget forever, but...just. For tonight.”_

_He feels rather than sees the small nod Dan gives, and then there are warm, chapped lips against his own._

_They’re okay, even for just the night._

 

Everything is so far out of reach, the weight of Dan’s thoughts forcing him down. 

It’s useless to try. It’s pointless. Dumb, impossible, lacking in sense. 

And he thinks, _Kind of like me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one is so short, the last few chapters will be v long


	5. distress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in it's softest form

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> added some smut this chapter, it is very brief && nondescript, sorry !! i may add more in the future.

Dan sits patiently on his bed, hands folded in his lap. 

It’s 1pm on a Tuesday and he has no particular plans. The fact that he’s managed to get himself out of bed and dressed is an enigma in itself. 

He’s been sitting here like this for nearly 12 minutes now, but in his mind he is floating and the concept of time is irrelevant.

The white and grey wash of his bedroom sits around him as if it were oil paint on canvas; the paralysis in his limbs cannot bear to smudge it but his nerves tingle. 

The enemy takes it’s form in a quiet uproar, vibrating deep in Dan’s gut and cementing him into still agony. 

Phil is due home from the shops any minute; he isn’t sure if that’s what he’s waiting for but he flinches when he hears the slide of the door against tile floor.

“I’m home! Can you believe they still have discount Easter candy at Tesco? I got 3 bags of tiny chocolate eggs, Dan! We could start a little chocolate chick farm,” Phil calls out, dropping his bags onto the kitchen counter before making his way up the stairs and down the hall. 

When Phil rounds the corner into Dan’s room his expression immediately goes from blithe to uneasy. 

“Is it bad?”

Dan offers a small nod, breaking the statue of his demeanor and shrugging the stiffness out of his shoulders.

In return, Phil crosses the room in four long strides, slowly settling down onto the bed next to him. 

“Can you look at me?”

 

He shakes his head. Blue eyes cannot scrutinize what they cannot see. 

 

“Dan. Dan, look at me please.” It’s not said as a plea, but as a direction.

He rubs at his eyes and cradles his face in his hands for a moment, a few sobs slowly racking his frame before he manages to glance up at him. 

“Oh, love,” Phil mutters, tugging Dan closer to himself, replacing stiff and trembling hands with his own. Their lips connect like dots in a constellation, Dan’s tears brushing past his cheeks like forgotten shooting stars.

12 more minutes; they kiss and kiss until the only thing Dan can seem to feel is warm hands and soft breaths. His bitten down nails catch on the front of Phil’s sweater every fourth or fifth swipe of wandering hands. 

The panic and misgiving thoughts leak from his brain and out of his eyes and Phil catches each one with damp fingertips and a whispered comfort. 

He’ll lay on his back and let Phil strip the worry off of him, let his clothes follow soon after. 

He’ll cry and let out useless breaths into his hand while Phil’s hands do work of their own. 

He’ll gasp and wrap his fist around the one circling his throat, the one that pushes the ugly, looming Death away.

He’ll plead for more than he can take and Phil will scoop him up and fuck the last of his tears away. 

And when he cums it’s like the rope on an anchor: snapping and sinking way, way, way down, much too far for him to ever reach again.

 

Sometime that evening, Phil will towel dry his hair and hand him a mug of cocoa because he insists on utilizing the AC despite the brisk weather. (He’ll mention it and they’ll share fond digs before snuggling down on the couch for a Sense 8 marathon.)

 

Wednesday morning at 9am.

Dan lay still in bed, eyes studying the way Phil’s hair branches out over the stark white of his pillow. 

Phil shifts, rolls over, lets his eyes brave the glow of daylight through the curtains and leans forward to press a morning-breath kiss to Dan’s forehead.

As if like magic, the touch breaks him out of the shell of his mind and lets him press himself closer to Phil, seeking warmth. 

For 12 minutes they lay like that; Phil offers to make them coffee and it feels like the war may be over. 

For the time being.


	6. (in)security

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (out)brazened

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very short little filler chapter before the last 3 which i promise will be v good & long

On a cloudy, dark day in London, Dan sits on the sofa feeling no different. 

He can feel the thick, rolling clouds file into his being; the storm leaves his eyes wet and hands shaking with thrums of thunder. When Phil jogs up the stairs and into the lounge it’s almost like he can hear it too. 

The force of it is deafening. 

With gentle fingers Phil tries to batt the clouds away, stroking a hand through Dan’s hair and sighing quietly. 

“I don’t want your pity, I’m not a child.”

This comes along with the storm, the hot white flashes of lightning and stinging rain. Phil knows this, he also knows you cannot fight nature. 

However, his hand burns and he refuses to pretend like it doesn’t.

“I know your head is a mess right now, but you can’t pull me into it too,” the way the words fall past his lips is feather soft against the back of Dan’s neck, where he also lays a kiss. 

Dan offers a dry laugh in return, “Just another thing I do wrong, right?”

“That was an oxymoron.”

“I’m a moron.”

“Stop,” Phil demands, hooking his hand under Dan’s chin, “You’re lovely. Do you hear me?”

Phil raises his eyebrows in a way that appears to leave no room for argument, his skin buzzing when Dan reaches up to place loose fingers around his wrist. 

“I don’t fucking _feel_ lovely,” he spits. His eyes flood with the downpour. 

With pondering eyes Phil slowly lets go of him, arms falling limp to his sides while Dan shrinks back into the cushions with crossed arms.

“How long have I loved you?”

He shrugs.

“No,” Phil huffs, kneeling in front of the sofa and placing his hands on jogger clad knees, “ _How long_ have I loved you?”

“Eight years,” Dan mumbles back, turning his head to press a splotchy cheek into the cushion.

This is not yet the eye of the storm. Phil will thrash and squirm and beat his way through the walls to get there, but for now, this is quiet destruction.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Eight years,” he snaps again. His lips are trembling like they do when he thinks too much for too long and forces down the alphabet soup until it spills through the cracks and down into the center.

“That’s right. Eight years, one month, seven days, and… _fourteen,fifteen,twenty_...twenty two hours.”

Only then does Dan meet his eyes. 

“Jesus,” he laughs, only this time it’s wet and sad sounding and Phil despises it. 

He laughs too. 

 

This will continue for a few moments. They laugh. And laugh. And laugh, until their ribs ache and their chests heave. 

As if on cue, the flood gates collapse seconds after.

 

Dan curls into Phil’s chest, body sliding pathetically off of the sofa and into his lap. 

He sobs like the clouds tell him too, the thunder booming in his ears. He can’t hear or see or fucking _breathe_ \- god, when did it get so hard to breathe?

“Breathe, Dan.”

It seems there’s really only one thing that can break past the blaring. 

He breathes. 

Phil steps into the eye of the storm, the walls left in pieces behind him. He breathes too, and they breathe together.

 

The storm is ugly, vile, manipulative - but with Phil there to shoo it away, he feels bliss. Like a cotton candy sky over a boardwalk in Florida, their fingers brushing and shoulders bumping, it is bliss.


	7. hesitance v. hindsight (pt.2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls forgive me, i have exams and my brain is mush

The past and it’s mistakes live inside the leech.

The thing grows and grows until it’s big and full of everything Dan thought he could forget - _toxicity_. 

It’s full of the way Phil’s face in 2am lamplight broke Dan’s heart - _february 14th_.

It’s full of denial and avoidance, dodging the problem before it hits - _2012_.

And most notably, it’s full of internalized feelings that he’d tried so desperately to push away - _displacement_.

Left with nowhere to go but inside the belly of the beast.

Dan thinks, eventually, he will become the beast himself.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading u can follow my twitter if you'd like (-: !! @foreheadcurl


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